It was on the crowded and noisy red carpet at the Banff World Media Festival earlier this week when actor and hip-hop artist Common may have revealed more than he should have about the upcoming season on Hell on Wheels. In Banff to present the Canadian Award of Distinction to actor Will Arnett, Common was asked what we could expect from Season 3 of the AMC western, in which he plays ambitious freed slave Elam Ferguson.“You can expect extreme high level of drama, fun, stories, new characters that are vibrant and incredible,” Common said.

The Russians may have lost the cold war, but they sure win their fair share of Honens International Piano Competitions. This year’s winner was Pavel Kolesnikov (from Siberia), and in 2009, the winner was Georgy Tchaidze, the son of a pair of chemical engineers who was born in St. Petersburg and grew up in a small town in Central Russia.

I am going to stop swearing. I mean it this year. Over the decades I’ve managed to knock a few things off the New Year’s resolution list, biggies like quitting smoking and small but mighty ones like eating kale. So far, despite being on the list for as long as I can remember, cleaning up my potty mouth has eluded me. I tried the swear jar. It lasted about 20 minutes. Had I kept it up, my brother assures me, I could have single-handedly bailed out Greece. I tried substitutions, the date-stamped “Flip Wilson,” the standard “Shut the front door!” and Liz Lemon’s beloved “What the what?” These expressions have expanded my repertoire, but they have not, alas, entirely replaced the “swears.”